Last month's poem of the month writer, Cath Nichols, has chosen this month's poem. Cath says,"Catherine Smith’s poem starts in a recognizable place (the religious door-to-door salesman) but then morphs off elsewhere. It encourages empathy but also surprises. I like that the religious type is not a Jehovah’s Witness, he’s ‘Presbyterian’, and that the woman trapped on her doorstep visualizes her soul as a tatty mongrel dog that she’s happy to lose. This is so distinctly ‘other’ than my own response to dogs (or dogs as metaphors) that I am compelled to experience the poem on its own terms. " Find out more about Catherine and her work at http://www.writeoutloud.net/poets/catherinesmith Soul The Presbyterian on my doorstep tells me my lack of religious conviction means I'm an unfit mother to my innocent children, my soul is currently in the possession of Lucifer. I decide my soul is a small brown dog (of interest only to me and Lucifer), an ugly mongrel (part terrier), with a penchant for wine gums and shagging strangers' ankles, and it grew savage and grizzled - incontinent and snappy, one ear frilled by fighting, a rheumy left eye. A liability, its breath stinking of old meat. So I tell the Presbyterian Lucifer's welcome to it.